Many of my scrap quilts are inspired by other quilters. I still find it useful to start with a collection of fabrics I think “go together”. In that regard, I do NOT worry about color per se, though I recognize that color is a big “bugaboo” for many quilters. I do find it useful to decide at the outset whether the quilt is to be bright or muted colors, but beyond that I don’t worry much. And of course I break that rule sometimes, too.
One of my first inspired-by-others adventures was a series of quilts I made after reading Gwen Marston’s books. I just love her aesthetic, and wish I had been able to take a class with her while she was alive. Here is a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance annual contest a few years ago, based on Gwen’s published quilts:

“Gwen Visits the Farm” is a quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance contest; the black fabric has words representing animal sounds such as “quack”
I also used a collection of Cherrywood scraps to make this quilt based on Gwen’s “liberated log cabin” idea:

Cherrywood Toss, 59″ x 61″, 2016. My favorite part of this was making the background out of a mixture of dark colors.
Also, taking a cue from my friend who makes a small art quilt each week, I made these 3 quilts based on lessons in one of Gwen’s books:
I continue to learn from the quilters I consider “the best” by making quilts inspired by their ideas. A recent one was inspired by Maria Shell’s tutorial on improvised flying geese:

The colors of the quilt blended with the colors of my chimney, where I stuck it up to be photographed
Of course, not all such experiments are particularly successful. I love Freddy Moran’s aesthetic, but this table runner based on her ideas didn’t turn out very well, in my opinion. I expect to make more things using her ideas, and they’ll improve 🙂

I designed and made this runner for a guild challenge
Since, at this point in my quilting career, most of my fabric collection is scraps, there will be many more scrap quilts to come! Next week I’ll discuss how I use scraps in quilts made from patterns.
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